"The aim of this article is to loosen the grip upon castle-studies of two connected obsessions: the major, that castles were predominantly military; and the consequence, that they they were dangerous to government, so licences to build them must have been reluctant. By concentrating upon the second assumption and following its ramifications in a selection of more and less scholarly writing, the way may be open towards a cultural interpretation of licences to crenellate, rather more sympathetic to the evidence both architectural and documentary. This alternative flows naturally from the difficulties of the traditional view." (Coulson)